Exhibition archive

The Tube. An Architecture for Conceivable Times
15.09.2023 to 05.11.2023
On September 14, 2023, the last special exhibition in the Kreuzberg museum spaces will open: "The Tube. An Architecture for Conceivable Times." In the early 1980s, architect and member of the "Werkbund" Günther L. Eckert developed an architectural utopia: a huge tube spanning the globe, that would provide a living space for all of humanity.

The Story of My Life. Object Biography as Concept, Method and Genre
19.01.2023 to 04.09.2023
Duration: 19 January 2023 - 04 September 2023
Can things recount their own biographies? The exhibition looks at the concept of the object biography, reconstructing its origins, and asks what the life of a thing might be and how we might conceive our perceptions of things – their biographies.

ORGANIZING THINGS
19.05.2022 to 02.01.2023
Duration: 19 May - 31 October (extended until 02 January 2023)
Order is a fundamental aspect of every museum: the ordering of things, the ordering of knowledge about humanity and the world. Our next exhibition takes a closer look at precisely these systems. Taking a closer look at these ordering devices can help us detect unconscious assumptions and blind spots, especially in museum work.

Crisis Gallery
01.01.2022 to 31.12.2024
Click through some examples of our crisis collection in the gallery.

Shaping Everyday Life! Bauhaus Modernism in the GDR
23.09.2021 to 14.03.2022
Duration: 23 September 2021 – 14 March 2021
A special exhibition of the Museum Utopie und Alltag, Eisenhüttenstadt in cooperation with the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge

the early years. mart stam, the institute and the collection of industrial design EXTENDED UNTIL AUGUST 30
25.03.2021 to 30.08.2021
Duration: 25 March 2021 – 30 August 2021
The exhibition puts a spotlight on the dawn of industrial design in the GDR and in particular on the work of the Dutch architect and Bauhaus member Mart Stam for a consistent modernisation of the product world and the institutional promotion of a new industrial culture.

The Braun Idea. On the Corporate Identity of the Braun Company 1954 to 1972
01.02.2021 to 31.12.2021
Duration: 25 March 2021 - 31 December 2021
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Braun company, the exhibition outlines the most important aspects and strategies of the Braun idea, the first comprehensive corporate identity (CI) of a German company

Commercial Design instead of Applied Art?
23.11.2018 to 11.03.2019
First Part of the Exhibition Series "111/99. Questioning the Modernist Design Vocabulary"

The Eroticism of Things. Collections on the History of Sexuality
02.05.2018 to 01.10.2018
Even before Freud, people were attributing erotic qualities to things. The exhibition traces the material and immaterial production of eroticism. Shape and color, purpose and use, implicit allusions and explicit renderings all make things the stuff of erotic fantasies, while also making them eloquent documents for a cultural history of sexuality.

FOTO | ALBUM
20.10.2017 to 09.04.2018
Extended until April 9! Private and Anonymous Photography from the Collection of Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge.

Cabinet of the Unknown
27.07.2017 to 02.10.2017
Thursday, 27. July 2017 to Monday, 2. October 2017
Cabinet of the Unknown is a project that pursues the goal to connect the known to the unknown. Taking its title as a cue from Cabinet d’Ignorance of Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in Dresden, Cabinet of the Unknown invites its collaborators from Oranienstr. to work on objects that cannot be taxonomified and defined at Museum der Dinge. The objects and the discussions discovered and remained undiscovered will compose the exhibition that will take place in July–September 2017.

gern modern? Living Concepts for Berlin after 1945
09.02.2017 to 26.06.2017
Duration: February 10 - June 26, 2017
Berlin after 1945: "How will we live?" was the question of the hour. The exhibition project 'gern modern?' explores ideas for actual and idealized concepts of home that were developed by German Werkbund members in the war-ravaged city and asks about the issue's timeliness and significance for the present.

Object Lessons. The Story of Material Education in 8 Chapters
16.09.2016 to 16.01.2017
Today, knowledge about materials, their origins and processing is valued and desired more than ever before. At the same time, such knowledge is specialized, concealed and the domain of experts. How can it become available to everyone?

Masse und Klasse: Graphic Design in the GDR
17.03.2016 to 29.08.2016
Thursday, 17. March 2016 to Monday, 29. August 2016

Young Collectors: A Student Exhibition
16.07.2015 to 31.08.2015
What do children and teenagers collect? How do you make a personal curio cabinet into a publicly perceived collection?

EPHEMERA – Advertising Graphics from the Collection of Documents of Everyday Culture
11.04.2015 to 05.07.2015
Globes, fire extinguishers, drills, cooker hoods, fur coats, roast chickens, rugs, television sets, circles, stripes, lines and colours:
The Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge presents a cosmos of pictures of day-to-day life with over 450 graphic advertisements from its collection of documents of everyday culture.

CUCULA – Refugees Company for Crafts and Design
20.03.2015 to 06.04.2015
Five young men – refugees from West African countries – produce high quality design objects in a Kreuzberg design manufacture: they are committed to build a basis for their future.

Made in Germany – Politics through Things. The German Werkbund in 1914
25.09.2014
On the eve of the First World War, the industrial design association Deutscher Werkbund, founded by artists and industrialists in 1907, launched a mobilization of things: the functional, standardized and materially sensible design of everyday products would make the label "Made in Germany", required by British import law, rise above its original status as a mark of ostensibly poor quality. On the contrary, "Made in Germany" would be transformed into a seal of quality, raising the export power of the German Empire.

STANDBY – On Living with Machines
23.05.2014 to 09.06.2014
A machine could be more than just a technical box, as shown now in the exhibition called “Standby” in the Museum of Things in Kreuzberg. The Institut for Formforschung, a cooperation of the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences / Department of Design and the Museum of Things, takes a closer look at machines in our daily lives.

Transformations – Concepts of Re-using Things
27.03.2014 to 19.05.2014
Recycling, re-use, longer use, material recovery, conversion to new purposes: the use of household and industrial waste in product design often creates not only new resources in the economic sense, but also new values in the ideal and personal sphere.

Ince belli / Slim Waist
21.03.2014 to 19.05.2014
Author’s cabinet Koray Ozgen (with Fuat Ozgen’s tea glass collection)
Fuat Ozgen collects objects and ephemera. A conversation with his designer brother Koray Ozgen initiated his passion for slim waisted (ince belli) tea glasses. In the following years this led to a considerable collection of these vessels mostly used in Anatolia since early 20th Century.

3 x Collection – Design-Historical, Culturally Significant, Aesthetic
12.04.2013 to 03.06.2013
Since 2007 the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge’s “open depot” standing exhibition has been pushing new levels of debate on the topic of collection in the public sphere. In the new exhibition series, “Collections Show…” we turn our attention to privately curated collections, comparing and contrasting their particular focuses and methods of organization.

On Time – Timethings from the collections of the Werkbund Archiv – Museum der Dinge
30.03.2013 to 05.08.2013
Whether we are spending it, saving it or wasting it, time seems to take on a thing-like character in many of our mental and verbal constructs about it. Such expressions reveal not only a widespread understanding of time as material, but an implicit commodification of the spaces between lived events.

The Interior of Devices
17.11.2012 to 04.03.2013
Matias Bechtold places a focus in his artistic works on the special traits of technical casings by reinterpreting the interior of a device as living space. Where a normal user may view the interior of a device as determined by the function of the device itself, Matias Bechtold presents the extracted section as a different world.

ISTANBUL ALPHABET from çokçok to zikzak
17.02.2012 to 09.04.2012
çokçok is a Turkish expression that means "an insatiable hunger for more". The exhibition ISTANBUL ALPHABET – from çokçok to zikzak partakes of the special quality of the Museum der Dinge: the exploration of the culture of everyday objects.

Museumsbauhütte II
11.11.2011 to 30.01.2012
"Museumsbauhütte" is a pragmatic and epistemological workshop, where scientific, artistic and technological knowledge is being integrated.
WOW – about the blinding by things
01.06.2011 to 11.06.2011
In the guest project WOW students of design at the Fachhochschule Potsdam present the results of their detailed research about the subject of "blinding". They try to visualise the different "blinding qualities" and show various aspects of product culture: things that were primarily created to impress others, to show off or to deceive.

brilliant grey – herbert hirche's centenary
21.05.2010 to 25.10.2010
The Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge exhibits the estate of the Bauhaus disciple and Werkbund adherent Herbert Hirche.
The exhibition focuses on the specific situation of post-war Germany, in which an ethics of things was proposed as a contribution to material and intellectual reconstruction.

Evil Things – An Encyclopedia of Bad Taste
16.07.2009 to 11.01.2010
The exhibition "Evil things – an encyclopedia of bad taste" uses a one hundred year-old system to categorise violations of taste, where things are not just submitted to a judgement of taste, but also to ethical valuation of their production, construction and appearance.

Museumsbauhütte (Museum Workshop) – Twelve artistic Museums and Museum Projects
22.11.2008 to 23.03.2009
This exhibition is dedicated to artistic museum projects, which reflect the museum in a critical, ironic, pensive or joyful way.

Detour – The Moleskine Notebook Experience
30.10.2008 to 16.11.2008
Detour is a travelling group show featuring the Moleskine notebooks designed by internationally recognized artists, architects, film directors, graphic designers, illustrators and writers.

Movables – 1000 pieces of furniture on 80 squaremeters
04.07.2008 to 10.11.2008
Apart from the permanent collection the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge shows a new installation focusing on furniture as a museum object beyond the usual attribution to a designer or a stylistic context. This new presentation questions the relationship between movables and space.

Battle of Things
30.06.2007 to 15.05.2008
The Werkbund Archive – Museum of Things takes the occasion of the 100-year anniversary of the German Werkbund (German Work Federation) to throw a critical eye on the history of the development and reception of this reform movement, and to review the objectives of the Werkbund with regard to their future usefulness in the light of current product culture.